


We Don't Need Reality; Hear Me Speak

by Ashtree11, Dikhotomia



Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Post-Canon, They Don't Get Any Work Done: The Fic, This Got Gayer Than We Intended, We Played Ourselves With Our Feelings, dumbass gays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27445855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashtree11/pseuds/Ashtree11, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: “Where the fuck do we even start…” she mutters, kneeling down to scoop up the nearest folder and reaching for the box a few inches away from her. She pulls it over, setting the file inside it and continues along that way, rising to her feet when it’s filled.“When in doubt, refer to the basics,” Emily answers as she fixes the cuff of her sleeve around her elbow. Though her tone was even, the way she tugs on the fabric just a bit too hard gave away that she was feeling just as overwhelmed. “We can start with getting everything off the floor, they suffered enough abuse.”ORJesse and Emily begin to tackle organizing the Archives, but they don't actually get much done.
Relationships: Jesse Faden & Emily Pope, Jesse Faden/Emily Pope
Comments: 3
Kudos: 73





	We Don't Need Reality; Hear Me Speak

**Author's Note:**

> Our first, but not our last, collab in this fandom! Basically Ash hit me with a headcanon that Emily could speak French and then expanded into Jesse probably knowing other languages and well here we are, 4k of pining later.
> 
> Jesse is written by me  
> Emily is written by Ashtree

The archive is a clusterfuck; a disaster sitting in the middle of a passing hurricane and Jesse had no idea what to do with it, staring at the settled whirlwind of papers and spilled boxes. She wonders briefly who it was who was in charge of it before the whole mess happened, and then wonders how long it had been since anyone had been through here last. Standing here now she regrets her choice to actually come down and start doing it herself, even if in passing she had asked Emily if she had a moment to help.

“Where the fuck do we even start…” she mutters, kneeling down to scoop up the nearest folder and reaching for the box a few inches away from her. She pulls it over, setting the file inside it and continues along that way, rising to her feet when it’s filled.

“When in doubt, refer to the basics,” Emily answers as she fixes the cuff of her sleeve around her elbow. Though her tone was even, the way she tugs on the fabric just a bit too hard gave away that she was feeling just as overwhelmed. “We can start with getting everything off the floor, they suffered enough abuse.”

There’s a set silence as Jesse watches her, box still in her arms and eyebrow raised, eyes falling on the way she pulls at her sleeves. She almost says something, breath drawn, lips parting but she decides not to, licking her lips instead and looking away to the mess they have stretched out before them. “Everything off the floor, huh?” she says, sighing.

 _That’s a lot of shit,_ she thinks, eyes flicking back to the researcher beside her. But if they didn’t do it, whoever they eventually got to do it would have to and right now at least one of them knew sort of what they were doing.

“And that’s just the easy part,” Emily drawls, trying and failing to not think about the files they would have to reorganize, catalogue, and store away. Several may even have to be restored thanks to that damned Astral Spike that somehow got loose in here. But, in spite of the daunting workload that laid ahead of them, she looks over at Jesse and smiles. “This certainly isn’t going to be like organizing your little collection back in Executive.”

Her ‘little collection’ -- which at the time seemed like a lot -- would have been preferable to the mess they were now faced with. “Nope,” she agrees, lips twisting slightly in a small grimace that doesn’t last in the face of Emily’s smile, offering her own in return. “Nope it’s certainly not.” _I think I’d rather do that again._ She moves off with that thought in mind, making her way over to the nearest table to set the box in her arms down on it. She sighs, rocking back on her heels.

“We’re going to be here a while.” Days, weeks, months. Maybe she could rope some rangers and other staff into helping them at least pick things up and start to reorganize. She just might have to get creative with her bribes.

Meanwhile, Emily kneels down, rights up an empty file box, and sets to work on gathering the loose leafs of paper around her. “I’d be inclined to say something inspirational like ‘it’s the journey not the destination,’ but frankly I’m two cups of coffee short of having that kind of optimism and I’m sure whomever came up with that saying didn’t have this specific scenario in mind.” 

Passively, she reads the headings and gleans that these were transcripts of recorded eyewitness testimonies. She closes her eyes with a deep sigh, feeling the heavy reminder of the tapes that were kept here as well. Hopefully being kept on the upper floors had saved them from damage. They can restore documents, sure, but recordings were virtually irreplaceable. _No, slow down. One thing at a time, Pope_ , she chides herself and fills the box as quickly and as neatly as possible until it’s full before moving on to the next.

“Just two cups?” She says passively, disappearing momentarily behind a shelf to gather another box and more files. She’s not nearly as neat or efficient about it as Emily is, choosing instead to just toss files into the boxes as she goes, sparing little more than a passing glance at the titles of them. This or that case, this or that notice, this or that interview. She wasn’t as worried about the same things as Emily was either, but she didn’t hold the same care for any of this. She had arrived in the aftermath after all, none of this had happened while she was here actively watching it unfold.

But she still saw the need to make sure they restored as much as they could, it was their history here after all. Everything the FBC and its agents had transcribed and bore witness to, it was too important to just let it fall to the wayside because she had decided to be too fucking lazy to worry about any of it (she wasn’t lazy by any means, but she also was new enough in her position she failed to see the importance of things until they were pointed out to her). It just meant she had to continue to keep her nose to the grindstone for more than just killing the pockets of Hiss that kept deciding to show up. Being Director involved more than just the physical work after all.

But keeping busy was preferable to stillness and giving her mind the chance to eat her alive, so cleaning up and organizing the Archives it was...and it was nice to have Emily along as company. 

Occasionally, Emily would sneak glances over at Jesse, and her gaze would linger longer than it probably should. There was something in the way the woman moves and occupies space that was just... captivating to watch. It was enough to distract her from the haphazard way she dumps file after file into boxes ( _Organizing comes later_ , a part of her reasons while her logical side is shoved into obscurity). Emily was no kinesthesiologist, but she’s _always_ a student and the deliberate movements in Jesse’s arms and purposeful strides bordering on effortlessness were nothing short of fascinating. 

How is it that someone like Jesse could wander in off the streets, face a paranatural resonance to help save the people who effectively ruined her life, and still be willing to clean up the mess that was their Archives, all the while maintaining such animated disposition? Perhaps Jesse wasn’t ‘efficient’ in a scientist’s-calculated-methodology sense, but she was dangerously effective in her own way; a _fighter’s_ way. And there’s still so much Emily doesn’t know about her... So much she _wants_ to know...

Suddenly remembering herself, Emily shakes her head and turns her attention back to her task. When the haze of her thoughts clears, her brows knit together as she finally realizes what it was she’s been holding in her hand. She assumes that it’s a letter based on its formatting, but she couldn’t make rhyme or reason from it. “Is this... German?” she wonders. Something like this would usually be in Dead Letters. Why is this in the Archives? Is there maybe a supplement page with a translation? She digs through the box to find it.

 _‘Excessive compartmentalization,’_ she’d say of her ability to just...keep going. She would admit it had taken her a long time to come to terms with the fact that the FBC had been behind some of the shit that happened to her and her brother, but she also couldn’t quite bring herself to hate them all either. Emily didn’t know half of what was going on and was the only person who actually offered her the time of day when she first stumbled her way in like a lost puppy. Yea, she had been pretty pissed when she learned the truth, but she’d stuffed that aside like everything else.

Jesse had just kept taping up that shattered part of her mind, sweeping more and more pieces underneath it and pretending it didn’t exist. One day she would have to sit down and deal with it and process her entire opinion of the FBC and her part in it now as Director. She had an opportunity to change it for the better and if the people here were willing to go along with it, well, why not? The Archives was just one part of getting things back up to snuff. She had things she needed to learn beyond all the shit she had randomly found while she was cleaning out Hiss. She could ask, sure, but even then they might still find themselves in here.

It just needed to be done, so they were doing it. Jesse was aware of the feeling of eyes on her back as she moved but paid little attention to it since she knew who it was who was staring at her. It wasn’t some stranger in a crowd or a would-be enemy, it was Emily. Her friend her Head Researcher, her--

She bit down on the thought, squinting at the file she had in her hand before she tosses it aside into the box nearest to her. She weaves between a shelf, stopping only when she catches sight of the radio half hanging off one of them. _Ah, I wonder what this one will play,_ she thinks, pausing by it to turn it on. She stands there a moment, listening to the low grind of bass as the song starts up. It’s catchy, something she can easily nod her head along to while she returns back to her work, moving with a bit more purpose and speed. 

It’s easy to do more than just work, the song pulling her into a dance that starts as a quicker step, feet sliding across the tile, lips quirking in a smirk. A small laugh spills out a second later as she picks up another box and adds it to the collection already on the table. She doesn’t think that Emily might be watching as she dances, moving her body in a slow undulation of muscle and probable practice. It keeps her focused and on task, the extra motions keeping her from getting distracted.

At least until she passes behind where Emily is standing on one circuit, eyebrows raising. “What’s that doing here?” She asks, leaning over her shoulder. “That’s a memo about some dude’s pipes leaking in his apartment, and unless it turned out to be some kind of altered object I don’t think that has any place here in the Archives….” Did someone mess up? Or did the house shift it in here somehow. 

Emily didn’t pay much mind to the sudden addition of music filling the Archive’s eerie silence, but her ears _did_ perk up at the sound of Jesse’s laugh. Such a rare thing to hear and her curiosity gets the better of her as she abandons her search to see what the woman was up to.

And whatever poor unfortunate page had ended up in her hand immediately gets crushed in her reflexive grip. Heat rushes to her cheeks, yet she feels like every part of her is frozen in place.

Of course Jesse can dance. Of _fucking_ course.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she says under whatever breath she had left in her lungs. On one hand, it was endearing to see her so carefree in that moment. On the other, that feeling was being demolished the longer she let herself stare. _Leering was a more appropriate term_ , she berates. She should look away. But damn it how can she when Jesse is moving like _that_? Only she could make shifting boxes around enrapturing.

It’s probably a bad sign when Emily wishes that the leather jacket was gone. She’s only seen Jesse without it a handful of times. And it’s probably an even worse sign that she wishes that she could feel the woman’s muscles shift and flex under her fingertips. Emily was by no means a dancer, but that didn’t stop her imagination in the slightest. The phantom reverie of being pressed up against Jesse while her hips rolled to the tempo of the song took center stage; and the confident smirk that often graces Jesse’s expression was clear as day in her mind’s eye.

 _Get it together, Pope, for fuck’s sake._ With a long, steadying breath, she turns away. She just needs to keep her head down and keep working. That’s how she made it through grad school, she can do it here, surely. “Wait... What was I doing again?” she mutters. Oh right, the German transcript. 

She managed maybe a few moments of focus before it’s broken all over again as she feels Jesse leaning over her shoulder to comment about the page. She snickers, hoping that it’s enough to hide the fact that their proximity is _extremely_ distracting. 

“A pipe complaint? It likely snuck in here from either an employee mix up or the House shifted it in—” Finally her brain catches up with Jesse’s words and she abruptly turns. Her eyes flicker back and forth between the document and Jesse, and her jaw falls open with surprise. “You can read German?”

She doesn’t realize exactly _how_ close they are until Emily turns suddenly, bringing them to a very different angle. She watches her for a few seconds, observing the way her eyes leap from the page to her and back, eyebrows raising slightly at the surprise that colors her face a second later. Jesse doesn’t quite move, but she does lean a tiny bit back, suddenly feeling like she was crowding the other woman. (Even if she didn’t particularly _want_ to move). She blinks once, twice, lips parting around a drawn breath as the words fully process and the question pings something in the back of her mind. 

“Ja, natürlich **_._ **” she drawls slowly, half grin tugging at the edge of her mouth. “While I was traveling across the States I ended up rooming with some people here and there and picking up a few languages. I can also read and speak Spanish.” She spent most of those times a bit paranoid about bringing trouble to these kind people who were willing to take her in while she was stumbling along lost and afraid of her own fucking shadow, but she was thankful to them all the same.

She picked both languages up by listening and by asking on nights she wanted to focus on something other than herself. She had been curious, honestly so, to learn the language and the culture and the history, sitting back and listening for hours and repeating offered words over and over in her mind until she had figured out all the syllables and the ways to roll them or not off her tongue.

But languages, and the history of her learning them, wasn’t exactly on the docket right now. It’s use had come and gone for the moment. She was able to translate the document and immediately set it up to be shuffled away in some box that might eventually end up in the furnace if they found nothing else connecting it to a case.

If there was truly a god out there, it was out to get her. Emily’s convinced of it now. She’s also convinced that her face is on fire at this point. She’s had colleagues express attraction towards those who can speak foreign languages, but she has never taken them seriously, let alone even understand the appeal in the first place. Being bilingual herself, it was purely functional, nothing more. And as Head of Research at the FBC, she is accustomed to and expects to be surprised and taken off guard on a regular basis. 

But nothing in her years of her employment here could steel her for everything that Jesse was. 

She clears her throat, but that doesn’t save it from cracking. “I-I see.” 

Well, she got what she asked for. She wanted to learn more about her and here she was: barely staying on her feet and on the brink of grabbing the collar of Jesse’s jacket and smashing their lips together, if only to finally relieve herself of the festering tension and heat.

But she doesn’t. She _can’t_. Yet she still goes against her better judgement and instead holds out the page for Jesse to take, all the while praying to a god that was out to get her that her trembling fingers weren’t noticeable. “Can... can you read the rest?”

There’s a few seconds of oblivious silence as Jesse watches the internalized chaos that goes on behind Emily’s eyes before the other woman clears her throat and speaks, her eyebrows twitch at the broken edge of her voice, confusion settling like a blanket over her shoulders. Her head tilts subtly, eyes searching her face for an answer that isn’t completely written there. She feels like she should know, and maybe she does somewhere in some part of her mind but she’s been shoving everything away into corners for so long she’s lost the proverbial box she’d stuck that detail in.

So instead she stands there in relative silence, listening to the distant ringing beat of the radio’s music rebounding off the Archive’s walls and shelves and floors, her eyebrows raising a little higher when Emily proffers the paper and _asks._

It’s hard for her to miss the subtle tremor of the page, watching the shudder of it as she reaches out to take hold on it and steady it, gently sliding it from Emily’s hold and turning it to look it over. “Yea,” she replies, scanning it quickly. “Though it’s not gonna be very interesting,” she adds. But she does, drawing a breath and starting to read out loud, it’s a quiet drawl, tongue rolling over certain words, voice dropping and rising in a constant modulation to go along with the sentences on the page. It’s mundane to her, and she thinks little about this strange gentleman and his leaking pipes -- she just hoped the poor guy got them fixed, especially given his memo was here and not in the hands of whoever managed the property.

She licks her lips slightly as she finishes the last part, eyes flicking up from the page to Emily still so close to her. “And that’s that,” she says, smiling slightly.

As Jesse switches back to English, Emily blinks out of the trance she had lapsed into and has to remind herself to breathe. Her eyes had been intently following the way Jesse’s lips shaped the words, and they linger there as she ends the reading with a smile. She thinks she hears the radio finally fall silent but her ears still ring with the memo’s closing lines.

Emily wasn’t one for poetry, and the only pieces of writing she’s ever produced herself were articles and think pieces that eventually netted her a job at the FBC, then later lab reports and annual fiscal proposals. But the muses sought to grace her with a fixation on the way Jesse’s voice dropped into a deeper register like a warm crackle of fire. The ease of which she flowed through the sentences in a melodious cadence was nothing short of enchanting.

In spite of the smoldering flush in her cheeks, an airy chuckle slips past her lips. _I’m really hopeless, aren’t I?_ Sure enough, when she is finally able to meet Jesse’s gaze, a dull ache settles in her chest. Not unpleasant but certainly intent on letting her know it’s there. “Thank you, Jesse. That was incredible.”

She wants to say it’s nothing special, but doesn’t, teeth sinking into the inside of her lip. She shrugs, eyes skittering away from where she had focused on the other woman’s face. The forgotten bit of information she’d shoved away surfaces again, reminding her in detail of what it was she wasn’t connecting.

_Oh._

It gets pushed away, Polaris flaring slightly in mild agitation at something Jesse immediately also chooses to ignore. “What about you?” she says, switching the topic off her. “Do you speak any other languages?”

Can she? She thinks for a moment, trudging through her muddled state of mind for an answer. When realization dawns on her, there is a momentary embarrassment for forgetting her second language before Emily feels a bubble of confidence. She grins as familiar, unused words come to her in an easy stream. “Oui. Je parle français.”

“Ah,” Jesse hums, smirking a little. “The language of love.” Or was that Italian, she couldn’t remember and didn’t really care to, because Emily had seized all of her attention with just a simple sentence. _I get it now._

Emily rolls her eyes, still smiling. “Yeah, yeah, like I haven’t heard _that_ before.” She picks at the skin of her fingers as memories overtake her. “My father traveled back and forth to Paris and sometimes he’d bring the whole family during my summer breaks from school.” She says ‘whole family’ as if it was of considerable size when in reality it was just her and her mother.

“While he was at the office, I stayed home and practiced my letters and key phrases while my mother did the same until we eventually became fluent.” She sighs, wistful and almost melancholic. “I haven’t used it in some time though, my accent is a little off. And reading it after all this time might be a different beast entirely.”

Jesse listens, hanging on every word as Emily opens up more about who she was outside of the FBC, about what sort of life she had before she started working here beyond what she had gotten out of the files she’d found laying around and what Emily herself had mentioned. It was interesting and Jesse found herself falling for the same trap the other woman had earlier...wanting to know _more_.

The shift in her tone makes her frown slightly, chewing at the inside of her lip. She mulls it over, picking apart the information and tucking it away in more visited corners of her mind, making sure to keep it there where she could easily pluck up the string again to chase it further whenever the chance arose. She was fitting the puzzle together, understanding more of the pieces of the woman before her. “Wow,” she says, shifting her weight slightly. “That’s pretty cool, I’ve never been anywhere outside of the US before.” Sometimes she wanted to. Sometimes considering hopping a plane to another country and never coming back. Those moments never lasted long though, and she was always back on task soon after. Now? Well, who knew where she would end up going as Director.

But she digresses. “I think your accent sounds fine,” she adds, shrugging a shoulder. “But I also haven’t heard much French outside of music and the occasional movie dialogue.” She pauses, drifting off slightly with another train of thought that threatens to tip her off kilter.

This wasn’t getting the files picked up, let alone anything organized. _Oh well. They’d already waited this long, they could wait a bit longer._

“You will one day. _Travel_ , I mean. A.W.E’s don’t limit themselves to just the states after all.” In a spur of boldness, she pats Jesse’s forearm, “And if it ever takes you to France I’m more than happy to give you a tour.” Friendly, casual, and not at all a semblance of her longing seeping through.

Then her eye catches the transcript still in Jesse’s hands and she is reminded once more of where they were and what they were doing. Gently, she takes the page from her and sets the document inside the box with the rest of its brethren. “At any rate we should get through as much as we can.”

“That sounds fun--the tour, I mean, not the A.W.E,” she clarifies, grimacing slightly. She really didn’t want to have to deal with whatever disaster would bring them there, momentarily thinking about what sort of damage or situation they might be presented with. But that was all hypothetical and she could settle quietly on the idea of walking around some city in France with the other woman.

Polaris hums and Jesse struggles to keep the heat threatening to spill across her cheeks at the remark. _No comments from the peanut gallery._

She comes back to herself as Emily slips the memo from between her fingers, reminding her that the did, actually, need to get the fuck back to work. “Yea,” she says after another short delay, clearing her throat. “Right. Let’s get back to it, then.” Slowly she peels herself away from the space they occupied, turning away to focus back on the files still scattered outside of their bubble of clear floor.

That should’ve been the end of the conversation. It was a nice break from the headache that awaited them, but it can’t last forever no matter how much Emily wanted it to. It’s a dangerous thing: to want. It detracts from what’s needed, what’s logical. 

She watches Jesse turn away—this brilliant, wonderful woman who has become a trusted friend—and the Want takes hold with an idea that is a dizzying combination of foolhardiness and cowardice. She can’t let the conversation end like this and leave herself to inevitably wonder how different it could’ve gone if only she had even a fraction of bravery.

Well. Here was her fraction.

“J’aimerais pouvoir te dire à quel point tu es spéciale pour moi, Jesse,” she confesses. Her voice stumbles and quakes around the syllables and she imagines that her father would be looking down at her in exasperated disappointment. Even so, her fingers curl deep into her palms as she says, “Tu es magnifique.” 

She’s heard her father utter those last few words to her mother so many times in her youth, and they’ve always sounded so confident and strong in a way only his unique baritone could execute. But as they passed from her own lips, they were soft, a decibel above her own shaking breaths. Even so, her posture doesn’t waver, she keeps her eyes level with Jesse’s, and while she doesn’t expect to look brave (not when she is using her second language as a shield), she wanted to at least look _sure._

Jesse stills the second she hears Emily’s voice again behind her, turning just enough to look over her shoulder and listens, the words so soft she almost doesn’t hear them. She doesn’t understand any of it, but the _tone_ digs into her ribs and sticks underneath the bone like a knife, pricking and pulling and threatening to bleed. She blinks, jaw flexing, eyes searching her face. She looks so sure and so scared at the same time, and slowly Jesse tries to piece it together through the cues. Through the way Emily looks at her, still holding her gaze despite the tremble in her hands, despite the raw emotion that haunts the near fathomless blue like a shadow. She feels stupid just standing here, struggling through a set of mental gymnastics to come to some kind of conclusion she’s almost entirely sure she’s gotten wrong, but she also can’t find the words to reply.

Like the air got pulled from the room, the archive’s silence suddenly just this side of suffocating.

“Emily,” she whispers, pivoting back fully to face her on a heel and reclaiming the distance between them with a step. “Emily I-” _don’t understand, I want to understand--_ The words don’t make it out as she reaches for her, fingers brushing against a trembling hand. 

_But I do--_

Slowly she takes hold of Emily’s hand, gentle, easing her fingers around the ones the other woman has dug into her palm.

She doesn’t say anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> TRANSLATIONS:
> 
> Ja, natürlich - Yes, of course.  
> Oui. Je parle français - Yes, I speak French  
> J’aimerais pouvoir te dire à quel point tu es spécial pour moi, Jesse - I wish I could tell you how special you've become to me, Jesse.  
> Tu es magnifique. - You're Beautiful


End file.
